Blizzard Responds To The “World of Starcraft” MMO Issue

A few days ago, Techland wrote about how Blizzard Entertainment asked YouTube to take down a video of a player-made Starcraft II MMO called World of Starcraft. Even though the MMO was made using Starcraft II’s Galaxy Editor, an Blizzard Entertainment approved map creator that the company has encouraged users to toy around with in the past and create something new, the YouTube complaint said that the Rock, Paper, Shotgun group had infringed on the Starcraft II copyright. Rock, Paper, Shotgun members got mad, saying that it wasn’t right that Blizzard Entertainment asked them as avid players to help create new material for the game, only to claim that they were knocking of the original game.

In a statement sent to Techland, Blizzard claims they have no problem with the gamers creating the MMO, it’s just the name of the game World of Starcraft that they had a problem with. They actually are extending an invite to the developer to come down to Blizzard to talk about how he created the mod. Blizzard wrote:

Earlier this week, a player-made StarCraft II mod called World of StarCraft and described as a “StarCraft MMO” was featured on a number of prominent gaming news sites, catching the attention of gamers as well as our own. With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place. We were also curious about the project and wanted to discuss with the developer what the mod entailed.

It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor. As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past. That’s why we release an editor with our RTS games, and why we feature top player-created content in the custom game search. It’s also why we held a contest to spotlight the best community-crafted StarCraft II mods at last year’s BlizzCon, and why we’ll continue to improve Battle.net to better showcase player-created content.

Like many players in the community, we’re looking forward to seeing the continued development of this mod, and as part of our ongoing discussion, we’ve extended an offer to the developer to visit the Blizzard campus and meet with the StarCraft II development team. As always, we appreciate all of the efforts of the talented and enthusiastic mod-making community, and we look forward to seeing and playing what they create using the StarCraft II editor in the future.

Okay so it was just the name Blizzard Entertainment had a problem with, but couldn’t they have dealt with it a different way instead of attacking with copyright infringement, which could mean everything from the title of the game to the content? We’re glad this story might have a happy ending though for both the company and the developers involved.